Do you think or feel your way through the day?
How do you weigh up situations and make decisions? Would you call yourself a thinker or a feeler? Well, it really doesn’t matter whether you are one or the other – and of course everyone has the capacity to both think and feel. What is important is how you think and how you feel.
If your thoughts are focused and driven by a positive intention to do some good and cooperate with other people, then the feelings which follow will be good feelings. On the other hand if you tend to think of problems, difficulties and use your thinking power to conjecture likely negative outcomes, then the feelings which follow will not be so comfortable. This latter scenario is the cause of a great deal of miscommunication and wasted effort, but all is not lost because there is a remedy.
Orange Circle Thinking (OCT)
When used as a coaching technique OCT will collapse negative feelings attached to situations where you feel anxiety, resentment, frustration or anger. Once these emotions have been dealt with you can replace them with something more empowering such as confidence, focus, strength or calm. The next step is to visualise a future scenario where you will be using this new emotional state to drive your behaviour and get a positive outcome.
We regularly use this technique to help managers deal effectively with a range of work scenarios including presentations to the board, public speaking, influencing peers and senior directors.
This technique features on the Real Success Programme where it is used in a multitude of personally challenging scenarios.
